Pak plane makes emergency landing at Karachi airport

Around 184 people escaped unhurt when a London-bound flight of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) made an emergency landing at the Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah international airport here due to engine fault.

Around 184 people escaped unhurt when a London-bound flight of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) made an emergency landing at the Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah international airport in Karachi due to engine fault.

A spokesperson for the national airlines said that the Airbus-310 took off from Karachi airport at 11:25 am but it returned when its pilot informed the control tower of serious problems in one of its engines.

The aircraft with 168 passengers and 16 crew members on board made an emergency lnding at 12:20 pm after flying for 55-minutes. All the passengers and crew were safe.

"The aircraft developed technical fault during the flight," the spokesperson said, adding "This is not unusual as it happens in every part of the world."

Television channels reported that one of the engines of the aircraft had caught fire forcing the emergency landing but the PIA spokesperson denied the report.

He said the engine did not catch fire and there was some other technical problem. The passengers were shifted to another flight to take them to London.

A spokesperson of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said that the landing of the aircraft was normal and no passenger was hurt during the process.

"The pilot of the aircraft took the right decision to come back to Karachi because it was a long flight of seven to eight hours," he added.

Since July, 2010 there have been four major air crashes in Pakistan.

In July, 2010, an Airblue Airbus 321 operated by the private airline crashed into the hills outside Islamabad while preparing to land, killing all 152 people on board.

In November the same year, a twin engine plane operated by a Pakistani chartered service JS Air crashed shortly after taking off from Karachi, killing all 21 people on board.

In the same month, 12 people were killed when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 cargo plane operated by Georgian airline, Sundway crashed seconds after taking off from Karachi.

While more recently in April this year a Boeing 737 operated by private airlines, Bhoja crashed due to bad weather in Islamabad, killing 130 people on board.